Deixis as the Origin of Language

International audienceA cross-linguistic, typological, phylogenetic, ontogenetic, diachronic, and synchronic analysis, takion in account semantic, pragmatic, phonological, morphological and syntactic data points at deixis as the probable origin of the language faculty. By no means are the so-called pronouns substitutes for nouns, as the etymology of the term 'pronoun' suggests. They are deictic demonstratives, and they differ from nouns in every respect, just as deixis differs from conceptualization. Bühler intuited this, but rejected the evolutionary implications, which are nevertheless more than probable